Hyosung plans PTA long-term

08 April 1996 00:00  [Source: ACN]

SOUTH Korea's Hyosung Group plans to build a PTA plant in Vietnam by the year 2000, starting first with a textile complex equipped with facilities for polyester production, weaving and dyeing. The US$440m complex project, which is being studied, is wholly owned by the group.

The weaving and dyeing plants will have capacities of 5m yard/month and 6m yard/month, respectively. They will be located at Longan, 30 km from Ho Chi Minh City.

The two facilities will be built first, hopefully within this year, Hyosung said. Once approved and built, the group plans to move on to PET chip polymerisation production, which will start a year or two later. Polymerisation capacity is targeted at 300 tonne/day. Details of the PTA project are not finalised at this stage.

The projects will be built by the group itself, using technology from its subsidiary company, Tongyang Polyester. Hyosung expects to export the main bulk of the output. 'The portion to be exported will be decided by the Vietnamese government. We are still negotiating this, and hope it will be a major portion,' manager and vice-representative of Hyosung's Vietnam branch office, Nam Kung told ACN. He said the output will mostly be exported to South Korea and some Asian as well as European countries. The balance will be for the domestic market in Vietnam.

Nam is confident the project will be approved by the Vietnamese government. 'The textile industry is one of the priority areas on which the country is focusing, so the project will not face any difficulty,' he said.

However, Vietnam has recently announced plans to slow down foreign investments, of which US$9bn has been committed to projects including those in industry, oil, gas, and construction.

Nam said that two other similar textile projects had already been approved by the Vietnamese government. One is a US$400m Taiwanese concern by Hua Lon, approved four years ago. The other is a South Korean US$200m project by Samsung's subsidiary Cheil, which is being built. Both companies are also producing mainly for the export market, he added. Nam is bullish about the continuing growth of world polyester demand.

In South Korea, Tongyang Nylon is planning to build a 110 000 tonne/year polypropylene plant in Ulsan. The facility, using Union Carbide's Unipol technology, is scheduled to start up next year. When completed, it will be able to produce a broad range of PP products including homopolymers, random copolymers and impact copolymers. Tongyang now operates a 80 000 tonne/year PP plant at Ulsan. It was started up in 1991 using Mitsui Petrochemical's technology.

For the latest chemical news, data and analysis that directly impacts your business sign up for a free trial to ICIS news - the breaking online news service for the global chemical industry.

Get the facts and analysis behind the headlines from our market leading weekly magazine: sign up to a free trial to ICIS Chemical Business.

Printer Friendly